Strong opinions, weakly held

Here in management-land, the New York Times story on workplace culture at Amazon has been the talk of Twitter for the past few days. The story paints an ugly picture of hyper-competitiveness, unreasonable demands, and exploitation that have caused many people to recoil (and some others to applaud).

I’m certain that the article isn’t comprehensive. It probably isn’t even fair. It’s a critique, and should be taken as such. I really liked Ellen Chisa’s explanation of why Amazon and Jeff Bezos should not take it personally.

But it’s important not to lose sight of a more urgent reality: As bad as white-collar workers may have it at Amazon and elsewhere, their blue-collar brethren have it much, much worse, and have much less power to negotiate better conditions.